The Complete Guide to Referencing and Avoiding Plagarism

215 Pages·2007·4.2 MB·English

by  Colin Neville

PRINT CMYK PROCESS COLOURS
Cyan Magenta Yellow Black 13mm
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Open UP Study Skil ls
The Complete Guide to Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism
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• Why is there so much emphasis on citing sources in some written h
work? e

• How can I be sure I am referencing sources correctly? C
• What is plagiarism and how do I avoid it? o
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There is a great deal of emphasis on accurate referencing in written
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work for university students, and those writing for professional purposes,
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but little information on the ‘when’, the ‘why’, as well as the ‘how’ of e

referencing. This book fills that gap, giving clear guidelines on how to G The Complete
correctly cite from external sources, what constitutes plagiarism and u
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how it can be avoided. d
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A unique feature of the book is the comparisons it makes between o
different referencing styles – such as Harvard, APA, MLA and Numerical R Guide to
referencing styles – which are shown side-by-side. This provides a useful e
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guide for students as they progress through higher education, and e
particularly for those on combined studies courses – who may be re
expected to use two, and sometimes three, different referencing styles. n
c Referencing and
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Other special features in the book include:
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• Essays demonstrating referencing in action a
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• Exercises on when to reference, and on what is, and what is not,
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Avoiding Plagiarism
plagiarism
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• A ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ section on the referencing issues that
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most often puzzle people o
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• A detailed guide to referencing electronic sources, and advice on how d
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to choose reliable Internet sites n
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The Complete Guide to Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism is essential P
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reading for all students and professionals who need to use referencing a
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to accurately reflect the work of others and avoid plagiarism.
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Colin Neville works at the University of Bradford and has worked as is
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a lecturer and learning support adviser in further and higher education
for over twenty years. He is the Learning Area Coordinator for the
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referencing learning area with ‘LearnHigher’. This is a Centre of Excellence o
in Teaching and Learning (CETL) project: a partnership of sixteen UK lin

universities and the Higher Education Academy, which is committed to N
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improving student learning and developing learning support resources v
for students and academic staff. ille
ISBN-13: 978-033522089-2
ISBN-10: 033522089-4
Colin Neville
Cyan Magenta Yellow Black
Page 1
The complete guide to referencing and
avoiding plagiarism
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The complete guide
to referencing and
avoiding plagiarism
Colin Neville
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Page 4
Open University Press
McGraw-Hill Education
McGraw-Hill House
Shoppenhangers Road
Maidenhead
Berkshire
England
SL6 2QL
email: [email protected]
world wide web: www.openup.co.uk
and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121-2289, USA
First published 2007
Copyright © Colin Neville 2007
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of
criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency
Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be
obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of Saffron House,
6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978–0–33–522089–2 (pb) 978–0–33–522090–8 (hb)
ISBN-10: 0–33–522089–4 (pb) 0–33–522090–8 (hb)
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
CIP data applied for
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in Poland EU by OZGraf S.A.,
www.polskabook.pl
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Contents
Preface vi
Acknowledgements x
1 Referencing 1
2 Why reference? 7
3 What, when and how to reference 13
4 Plagiarism 27
5 Referencing styles 42
6 Harvard style of referencing 49
7 American Psychological Association (APA) and Modern Languages
Association (MLA) referencing styles 69
8 Numerical referencing styles 76
9 Frequently asked questions 86
10 Referencing in action: example references 101
Appendix1 Answers to the quiz on understanding when to reference 170
Appendix2 Plagiarism quiz answers 171
Appendix3 Exercise: Is it plagiarism? 172
Appendix4 How can theories of managing change be applied in life planning? 174
Recommended reading 181
References 182
Index 186
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Preface
The title of this book is a somewhat impertinent one, for reasons that will become
clearer later in this preface. The book is likely to be of interest to you if you are currently
studying in higher education or on a pre-degree course in a school or college. It pres-
ents, discusses and gives you examples of the main referencing systems found in higher
education in Britain. However, it also tries to explain the principles of referencing: a
practice that often worries, exasperates or baffles many students.
It also describes and illustrates, what often seems to the casual observer, the often
small differences between the main referencing styles applied in Britain. They may be
small differences, but their academic guardians will often fiercely defend the refer-
encing styles described in this book. Particular referencing styles are adopted by subject
disciplines, for reasons linked to history, professional practice, or for reasons of per-
sonal whimsy by heads of department – and defended thereafter by them, often out of
sheer cussedness, against administrators who try to introduce uniformity of referencing
practice across an institution.
The guide, I hope, may prove particularly useful to those of you who encounter a
range of referencing styles in your progression through pre-degree, undergraduate and
postgraduate studies. Undergraduates, for example, on a combined studies degree, may
find themselves having to reference sources in two or more styles as they encounter
different disciplines, with each discipline wedded to its own referencing style prefer-
ence. The graduate may then move on to a postgraduate programme and encounter a
completely new referencing style – and with tutors insistent that they meticulously cite
and reference their sources in line with departmental practice.
Although the author–date (Harvard) referencing style appears to be a significant one
in higher education in Britain (see results of a survey, Chapter 5), the American Psycho-
logical Association (APA) and Modern Languages Association (MLA) styles still retain
their firm holds respectively in psychology and language disciplines. In addition,
numerical referencing styles, including those recommended by the Modern Humani-
ties research Association (MHRA) and Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
(IEEE), still maintain a strong presence in a wide range of humanities, science and
technology courses.
However, although the author–date (Harvard) referencing style, followed by the two
numerical styles, appear to be most significant referencing styles in Britain, the bench-
mark guides for their application, British Standard recommendations, are less satisfac-
tory, compared with others, particularly APA and MLA. The referencing style guides
produced by the APA, MLA, MHRA and IEEE are all written by their respective associ-
ations in clear prose, with easy to follow referencing examples and with the rules of the
referencing game spelt out unambiguously to their disciples.
British Standard (BS), however, presents the author–date (Harvard) and two numerical
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PREFACE vii
styles in a rather desiccated and unimaginative way, and one reads with no great sur-
prise that a committee comprised of representatives from 19 bodies were responsible
for drafting them. The examples presented in the BS recommendations also do not
seem quite to connect with the sources the average student, outside Oxbridge,
encounters and applies in Britain today. No wonder then, that the transformation of
author–date (Harvard) and numerical style references, from ’British-Standard speak’
into more accessible, student-friendly prose, has been undertaken over the years by
countless librarians, editors, study skills advisers and publishers.
In the process, however, each interpretation has been distilled with the essence of the
individual writer. Most adapters of BS recommendations have kept to BS recommenda-
tions for presenting the order of elements in references, but you will find subtle vari-
ations on BS wherever you look. British Standard, for example, illustrates full source
references showing:
• Name (s) of authors or organizations in upper case
• Year of publication not enclosed in parenthesis.
However, institutional variations have emerged. Some institutions, in their refer-
encing guidelines to students, follow British Standard and illustrate author names in
upper case, while many others do not; and it is almost universal practice in UK institu-
tions now to illustrate author–date (Harvard) references with the year shown in
parenthesis.
What appears to have happened is that Harvard and APA styles, because of their
similarities, have merged gradually into a referencing hybrid. There are still differences
between Harvard and APA to be observed – as this book shows – but these are akin to
parents knowing the difference between their identical twin children. Pity then the
poor student asked to use both Harvard and APA styles on a combined studies degree
and who has to work out the differences between them!
So, faced with the myriad subtle institutional versions of Harvard and a lesser num-
ber of numeric referencing guidelines to choose from, which one does this author
choose? Like most guides to referencing, this one is somewhat of a hybrid too, in that I
have followed the BS order of elements in references, but deviated by using the wide-
spread practice of placing the year in parenthesis for Harvard referencing.
On the other hand, I have followed the British Standard examples by using upper
case with author or organizational names, as this tends to distinguish and highlight the
author from other elements in the source. I have also followed the recommendation of
British Standard to keep capitalization in the title to a minimum, as this in line with the
advice in many contemporary writing style guides.
So, and this is where the impertinence in my opening sentence comes in; it is prob-
ably impossible to produce a definitive and ’true’ guide to referencing that embraces
the Harvard and British versions of the numerical styles, given the subtle variations
that abound. The guide is, therefore, as ’complete’ as a mortal being can make it in
the face of these differences.
What I have done, however, is to try and explain why you should reference in the
first place, explain the main differences in referencing style, and give examples of the
most commonly used assignment sources in Britain today – plus a few that are uncom-
mon. Once the principles of referencing are understood, and with some examples to
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viii PREFACE
guide them, you should be able to work out how to reference the sources you are likely
to encounter on most courses.
But surely a book on referencing is an anachronism when today you can use refer-
encing management software to find sources and organize your bibliographies? You
would think so, but it is not yet the case. As I argue in Chapter 3, although the software
is often freely available to students within their own institutions, it can be time con-
suming to use and to master, and many simply do not bother. The available software
does not yet solve all information retrieval, citation and referencing problems, and a
universal, easy to use referencing software management system has yet to arrive on the
scene. It undoubtedly will arrive in due course, but for the moment, and perhaps even
then, this book has some modest expectations of life. For, despite the advance of soft-
ware, the book and other printed forms still retain the advantages of their flexible,
easy to use formats. However, I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Sources and influences
The sources for referencing examples presented in this book are based on guidelines
and recommendations from the following:
• For author–date (Harvard) and British Standard numerical referencing styles
(Numeric and Running-notes): British Standard Institution (BS) guidelines: 5605:
1990: Recommendations for citing and referencing published material; BS 1629:1989:
Recommendation for references to published materials; BS 5261–1:2000: Copy preparation
and proof correction – part 1: design and layout of documents; BS ISO 690–2:1997 Infor-
mation and documentation – bibliographic references – part 2: Electronic documents or
parts thereof
• For variants on the British Standard Numeric referencing style, the following sources
were used: IEEE: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transactions, jour-
nals, and letters: information for author (2006); for the Vancouver style numeric
system, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Uniform requirements
for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals: sample references (2006); and for
MHRA: Modern Humanities Research Association, the 2002 edition of the MHRA
style guide: a handbook for authors, editors and writers of thesis
• For author–date (APA): American Psychological Association (2005), Concise rules of
APA style
• For author–page (MLA): Gibaldi (2003), The MLA Handbook for Writers.
I have also drawn on the guidelines on referencing legal sources produced by the
Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities, produced by the Faculty of Law,
University of Oxford. Other useful sources have been the British Standard BS 6371:1983
Recommendations for citation of unpublished documents; and the guidelines suggested by
Li and Crane in their book, Electronic styles: a handbook for citing electronic information
(1996). Other publications also consulted and found to be particularly helpful were
Pears and Shields (2005) Cite them right: the essential guide to referencing and plagiarism;
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PREFACE ix
Levin (2004) Write great essays; and Maimon, Peritz and Yancey (2007) A writer’s
resource.
This guide to referencing then, offers advice and examples of referencing that will
help you to reference sources in a consistent way – and in a way that connects recog-
nizably and conscientiously with a particular and identifiable referencing style.
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